Deciding Where to Go
by caffeineaddict13
Summary: Literati babbling, late at night. She was saved not because she deserved it, but because it mattered.


**A/N: **Um...something. Review, cause you know thats what I live for.

It was funny that she ended up here, knocking on a door, when, really, all that had ever mattered was staying put. She had run away. She didn't feel deserted, though. In contrast, she finally had a destination. She wasn't figuring herself out anymore. She was found. She was real. She was knocking on a door, and she felt so stationary as the light swayed in front of the dark wood, her eyes following trails of imperfections on the maple. She was knocking on a door, and she didn't feel alone, she didn't feel deserted. She was a knocking on a door, and it was then she realized this was her choice. She had made it, and it meant something. This door that stood in front of her. The gold numbers that spread diagnally across the wood blurred together in her clouded vision, the blues turning to reds, veins running with hopeful colors across her blacked out screen. She was knocking on a door, and that was all that mattered.

She didn't notice when her knuckles began to bleed. She didn't notice when she hit her head, or when her knees buckled. She didn't notice when her cheeks were suddenly wet with salt, even though she could conciously feel it and taste it, and it didn't really matter. She didn't notice when the door opened, or when the numbers stopped blurring and suddenly the veins were her own and they were pulsing in time to her heart, her head, herself. She was saved from her self-destruction, and it was only by a pair of hands and a tiny, beating point that no longer pitied, but believed. She was saved not because she deserved it, but because it mattered. To someone, somewhere, with a pair of hands and a maple door, it mattered. One person's vision was not clouded, even if their head was. They could not taste the salt that had hardened on her face, but they could see the red veins in her eyes and the crack in her voice and they understood. This was not their journey, but they were a part of hers.

What she has, what she owes, what she wants: it's pain without ever getting hurt. It's empty when it's full and alive while it has already taken it's last breath. She knows what it's like to feel lonely in the midst of too many people, and she knows what it's like to be wrong (to be a contradiction). She was wrong before, and she will be wrong again. She knows the way back, and she knows she will never find it, because although the route is traced into her memory the road has been long gone from her view. She will turn right instead of left, and she will know that she is lost. It takes more than a door to find her way back. It takes more than this beating to put life back inside body, and even when she hears it's coursing through her ears, engulfing her noiselessly and static booming at once, it is nothing. She doesn't believe in right anymore, and those hands will try to find it. They know what she is missing, and it is not the answer. It's the question.

When she wakes, she is no longer looking at a door. She is looking at the sky, in a tiny drip-drop hole of sky, blue like her eyes and light. She remembers only dark, and it surprises her that there is something else out there. The moon was still blank when she was waking, and the stars were clouded over by her thoughts. Now that there is light, she finds it's just as unclear. She sees it floating in the air, taunting her recovery with confusing up and down, with knowing she can't help it. She is not Rapunzel, and she does not have the hair to let down. She cannot save herself, and she cannot save the answer. Once again, she forgets. To him, she is not Rapunzel. Not because she's helpless, but because she can't find what let her down. She needs help, and so does he, and in some world; some life, that means each other. It's okay to ask for what you need. She drifts off into sleep.

And it's funny, in a way, that she ended up here. It's funny that the one person that drove her to this was the one to save her. Her own realization that, in the end, she was here not because of fate, but because of choice. Because it wasn't meant to be, not by a long shot, and it certainly wasn't fair. But what she had become was so far from what she had been that she had no option but to retrace her steps. She was finding herself, and the last place to look was where she had been lost. It was only then that she realized that's where she should have looked first. It didn't surprise her that she woke up with his hand in hers, and it didn't surprise her that she knew this was the end. It didn't surprise her when she had one last thought before leaving, once again, to finish what she started: she could always come back. This wasn't home, and this wasn't paradise, it wasn't faith or hope or heaven; but it was here, it was real. And it was, at the very least, herself.


End file.
